In his latest video, German synthesist Hainbach takes a look at the Quilter Labs Panoptigon, a modern optical playback instrument, that’s compatible with sample discs for the Mattel Optigan, Vako Orchestron and Chilton Talentmaker from the 70s.
The instruments play back samples that are optically encoded on to discs made of film. The sounds are imaged onto the film as concentric rings. During playback, the instrument shines a line through the film, and a sensor translates the variations in light back into sounds. It’s all very lo fi – even for the ’70s – but the technology gives everything a unique and haunting sound.
The technology was probably used most famously by Kraftwerk, who used the sound of the Vako Orchestron choir on the albums Radio-Activity and Trans-Europe Express.
Video Summary:
“The devices were not a commercial success and quickly disappeared. But one enterprising band from Germany took their lofi sound to heart. Kraftwerk employed the Orchestron in many songs, from Das Model to Uranium.
Even today its finds fans – such as Kyle Dixon of Survive, who used the iconic “choir” in their Stranger Things soundtrack. He employed the modern adaption of this arcane technology, the Quilter Labs Panoptigon. I talk with Kyle in the video, show a bit what you can do with the Panoptigon, demo classic Kraftwerk patches and introduce my own disc for this fantastic instrument.”
Check out the video and share your thoughts on the Panoptigon in the comments!
It’s very cool, but is it $4000 of cool? Plus ~$90 each for the proprietary sample discs. You can get an Octatrack for 1/3 of the price with 8x the number of tracks and more features.
If you’ve ever hacked a portable CD player, you may recall that scratching CDs works surprisingly well – they spin at between 2-500 rpm, but the laser part doesn’t care if you mess with the rotation motor. Might be interesting to port the turntable design to cheap commodity hardware (as opposed to the more software driven DJ CD players which lack the tactile feel of a spinning disc).
You can get an Octatrack for 1/7th of that
i have the app. even cheaper.
There are several below-$4k alternatives if you really want an Orchestron. GForce’s M-Tron Pro has add-on libraries for that and the Optigan. Its also not a hard sound to build in a synth. Going lo-fi by mixing a choir/vocoder sample and a string section easily gets you in the ballpark. Early samplers were all pretty grainy, so nostalgia is just a few tweaks away.
I admire what it took to make the Panoptigon a playable tool, since I had an Optigan as a kid. $4k is an all-too-popular price these days, though! I don’t fault most boutique pieces, because its often a case of exploration. I’m just glad I can layer two softsynths now and build a personal Orchestron.
BTW, I got to try out a real Mellotron once and while the sound was hypnotic, actually playing the damned thing is what a friend called “a ring-tailed bitch.” It was more like a workout with 20-pound weights than playing an instrument. It made me admire Banks, Wakeman and others even more. Hug your computers & workstations! You don’t know how lucky you are, boys.
Cool, but I’m not really convinced to drop 4K on this for what it can do and nice for Kyle that he has 4000+ valued gear randomly around, I don’t.